JEDDAH, 30 May 2006 — A high-level delegation comprising three ministers and two officials from Sri Lanka met with Minister of Haj Fouad Al-Farsy and signed an agreement for arranging the visit of pilgrims for the Haj next year, the delegation leader said yesterday.
“Aside from signing the formal agreement, the main focus of our meeting with Al-Farsy was to coordinate the arrival of more pilgrims during the Haj,” A.H.M. Fowzie, Sri Lanka’s minister in charge of Haj affairs, told Arab News.
“About 200 more Haj pilgrims will be coming this time against 7,500 during the last Haj,” said Fowzie.
“We also specifically discussed the arrangements that will be made in Mina, Arafat and Muzdalifah during the pilgrimage,” Fowzie said.
Saudi Arabian Airlines will be transporting Haj pilgrims from Colombo to Jeddah like in the previous years. They will then travel by road to Makkah and Madinah, said the minister who also held meetings with Saudia officials.
“We’re spend millions of rupees in our country to give a proper orientation to pilgrims. We educate them about the various rituals of the pilgrimage and how they should conduct themselves especially during the stone-throwing ceremony,” the minister said, referring to the Jamrat Bridge ritual, which in previous years has been the most dangerous of the Haj activities faced by pilgrims due to problems with pedestrian bottlenecking and crowd control.
Fowzie said one other objective of the mission was to acquaint the Ministry of Petroleum about the oil situation in the island state. “We’re losing two billion rupees per month, as we’re selling petrol at the subsidized rate of 88 rupees as against its actual price of 100 rupees,” Fowzie said.
